The goal of this talk is to provide a general overview of dust attenuation in galaxies. I start with the difference between attenuation and extinction and why it is the attenuation that is relevant in the context of galaxies. Next I define effective attenuation and provide some parameterizations for the dust attenuation law. I describe the role of star/dust geometry in attenuation. In the overview of observational results, I discuss the wide diversity of attenuation laws and the principal role of the optical depth in shaping them. I summarize what we know of the evolution of dust scaling relations as well as the recent JWST results pertaing to early, potentially dust-free galaxies and the role of dust in the interpretation of the puzzling Little Red Dots.